Life of Count Rumford. 135 



" The whole country within the British lines was subject to 

 martial law ; the administration of justice was suspended ; the 

 army was a sanctuary for crimes and robbery, and the grossest 

 offences were atoned by enlistment. Many of those who had 

 served as officers in the militia, or as members of the town and 

 county committees, fled into the American lines for safety. 

 Some of the most active of those who remained at home were 

 taken to New York, and suffered a long and tedious imprison- 

 ment ; others were harassed and plundered of their property ; 

 and the inhabitants generally were subject to the orders, and 

 their property to the disposal, of the British officers. They 

 compelled the inhabitants to do all kinds of personal services, 

 to work at their forts, to go with their teams on foraging par- 

 ties, and to transport their cannon, ammunition, provisions, and 

 baggage from place to place, as they changed their quarters, 

 and to go and come on the order of every petty officer who had 

 the charge of the most trifling business. 



" In April, 1783, Sir Guy Carlton instituted a Board of Com- 

 missioners for the purpose of adjusting such demands against the 

 British army as had not been settled. The accounts of the 

 people of the town of Huntington alone for property taken from 

 them for the use of the army, which were supported by receipts 

 of British officers, or by other evidence, which were prepared to 

 be laid before the Board, amounted to <y,-249 qs. 6</., and these 

 accounts were not supposed to comprise one fourth part of the 

 property which was taken from them without compensation. 

 These accounts were sent to New York to be laid before the 

 Board of Commissioners, but they sailed for England without 

 attending to them, and the people from whom the property was 

 taken were left, like their neighbors who had no receipts, with- 

 out redress. During the whole war the inhabitants of the isl- 

 and, especially those of Suffolk County [in which was Hunting- 

 ton], were perpetually exposed to the grossest insult and abuse. 

 They had no property of a movable nature that they could, 

 properly speaking, call their own ; they were oftentimes deprived 

 of the stock necessary to the management of their farms, and 

 were deterred from endeavoring to produce more than a bare 



